* In A Nation of Mystics, author Pamela Johnson deftly explores the youth subculture in San Francisco and Berkeley in the mid-1960s, with all its initial goodwill and naiveté--its dedication to free speech, promise to end war, commitment to racial equality, new art and music, and the exploration of spirituality based on mind-expanding hallucinogens.

In this epic story of intimacy, metaphysical exploration, and coming of age, the Haight-Ashbury becomes home to genuine and unforgettable characters: Christian Brooks, haunted by a fiery riot in India, leaves the ministry for a new path to God. Kathleen Murray arrives seeking to change the world and exchanges picket lines for a more direct method of altering consciousness. Brilliant young botany student Myles Corbet must choose between prison and betraying his oldest friend. Jerry Putnam, seeking knowledge through science, instead discovers the shamanic calling. Opposing them is drug agent Dolph Bremer, who vows to crush the counterculture movement through any means necessary, while attorney Lance Bormann carefully walks between worlds to defend his young clients.

Book I, Intentions, is the story of the communal family's growing commitment to the creation of a new culture--to social action, expanded awareness, new insights into the nature of mind, and the courage to make change.

Although set in the 1960s, A Nation of Mystics is strikingly relevant, addressing conflicts between political idealism and the old order, violent police overreach, and the beginning of America's War on Drugs.

* In Book Two of A Nation of Mystics, author Pamela Johnson resumes her skillful exploration of the late-1960s and the counterculture through the eyes of a communal family, following the strengthening relationships of the tribe as they search for enlightenment through mind-expanding hallucinogens and work for political change. Christian Brooks, now twenty-one years old, expands his underground activities by moving into Europe to acquire chemicals for his high-yielding LSD lab in Los Angeles. Kathleen Murray struggles to develop her own business in a male-dominated world, searching for a balance between spiritual enlightenment and money, while trying to find a way to resolve binding love and independence. Forced to leave the Bay Area, Myles Corbet becomes an undercover agent working for Interpol in Germany and Amsterdam. Using all the botanical talent of his young life, Jerry learns to produce the beautiful and vision-manifesting mushrooms of the Mazatec shamans of Oaxaca. Supervisor Dolph Bremer, more frustrated and therefore more ruthless, turns his police investigations on Lance Bormann, attorney, as he contemplates a way to pay Bormann back for his successes in the courtroom. The different threads of the family's conflicts, acquired knowledge, and personal resolutions finally intersect in the building of a community park on university land in Berkeley. As the youth movement pits itself against the establishment, the conflicts ultimately explode in tear gas and gunfire over the idealism of People's Park. Although set in the 1960s, Book Two: The Tribe addresses questions that continue to be relevant today-what constitutes true crime, police reaction to civil disobedience, the nature of religious freedom, and needless violence when legal access to sacramental hallucinogens, money, and spirituality collide.*

* In this final book of Pamela Johnson's epic trilogy on the 1960s, the story of communal family and their search for enlightenment through religion, mind-expanding hallucinogens, and mysticism continues. Although the social and political bruises of the Berkeley People's Park riots begin to heal at the Woodstock Music Festival, the family soon faces new danger from both murderous competitors and law enforcement. In "Journeys," the decade draws to a close, and as time passes, members of the Tribe are forced into making difficult choices. Christian Brooks finds he must return to India to face his demons. Kathleen Murray searches for a way to continue to hold to her ideals, even though hard men take her innocence. Myles Corbet, now a full agent working in Europe and Asia for Interpol, must finally come to terms with his actions, including the betrayal of his best friend, Jerry Putman. Narcotics Supervisor Dolph Bremer faces the case of his life; he will win all or lose all in his contest with attorney Lance Bormann. Through its characters, "A Nation of Mystics" explores eternally relevant human questions-how to seek peace in the presence of evil, the life-altering implications of personal choices, the discovery of strength, and the fortitude to transform idealism into action. "Book 3: Journeys," ties together the important threads of America's counterculture beliefs into a single knot, the ideas and actions of a generation poised on the threshold of a new decade, ready to stand the test of time.

Owsley and Me: My LSD FamilyRhoney Gissen Stanley260 pages Publisher: Monkfish Book Publishing (April 16, 2013)"Owsley and Me" is a love story set against the background of the Psychedelic Revolution of the '60s.Owsley "Bear" Stanley met her in Berkeley in 1965, when LSD was still legal and he was the world's largest producer and distributor of LSD. Rhoney found herself working in an LSD laboratory, and the third corner in a love triangle. We all know the stories from the '60s—but never from the point of view of a woman finding her way through twisted trails of love, jealousy, and paranoia, all the while personally connecting to the most iconic events and people of her time.

As someone who worked in the labs that produced LSD, Rhoney has firsthand knowledge of the environment surrounding the Psychedelic drug in its heyday. Famous people —"Timothy Leary", "Jerry Garcia", "Ravi Shankar", "Jimi Hendrix", "Ken Kesey"— wander in and out of the story, which delivers a vivid, behind-the-scenes look at the 1960s counterculture. A nostalgia trip for many, to be sure, but also an involving love story that chronicles the sometimes turbulent relationship between Rhoney and Owsley.

Bear supported the "Grateful Dead" in their early years and gave away as much LSD as he sold—millions of hits. He designed and engineered the infamous Wall of Sound system of the early '70s, just before he began his two years in prison, with Rhoney raising their infant son. He died one year ago, but the era he helped create is now being rediscovered by a new generation interested in the meaning of it all.

Visionary Women of the Grateful Dead –Rhoney StanleyI will share the stories of influential women who informed the Grateful dead scene: our visions of how both culture & family could be different from the complacency & materialism in our own upbringing, our creativity in the arts and in valuing the handmade, our spirituality and sense of oneness with each other and nature that we learned from taking LSD, and how we became a family that made counterculture mainstream culture. I will draw from interviews with women who worked for & influenced the Grateful Dead & the Merry Pranksters as well as stories from my book, Owsley & Me: My LSD Family, to show how our lives embodied new values that connected us as a tribe to each other & our earth.About RhoneyRhoney Gissen Stanley, a graduate of the University of California, worked in the LSD labs of the 1960’s with her partner, Owsley Stanley. She is a practicing holistic orthodontist in New York. Learn more on Rhoney’s website.Her book, OWSLEY AND ME: My LSD Family is a love story set against the background of the psychedelic revolution of the ’60S. OWSLEY “BEAR” STANLEY met Rhoney in Berkeley in 1965, when LSD was still legal and he was the world’s largest producer and distributor of LSD. Rhoney found herself working in an LSD laboratory, and the third corner in a love triangle. We have all heard the stories from the ’60s—but never from the point of view of a woman finding her way through twisted trails of love, jealousy, and paranoia, all the while personally connecting to the most iconic events and people of her time. Bear supported the Grateful Dead in their early years and gave away as much LSD as he sold—millions of hits. He designed and engineered the infamous Wall of Sound system of the late 70s, just before he began his two years in prison, with Rhoney raising their infant son. He died two years ago, but the era he helped create is now being rediscovered by a new generation interested in the meaning of it all.“Rhoney has not only DONE the acid, she had MADE the acid under the tutelage of Owsley Stanley. She had been a lab technician for the skeleton crew who produced an estimated two million hits to fuel the Northern California psychedelic revolution of the sixties.” Tom Davis

About the AuthorRhoney Stanley lived & worked side by side with Owsley Stanley, one of the pioneers of the psychedelic revolution of the sixties. During their time together, he produced 1.25 million doses of LSD. Together, they raised a son, Starfinder. She is a Columbia University graduate.

Tom Davis was an Emmy Award-winning American writer and comedian. He is best known for being one of the original writers for Saturday Night Live and for his former partnership with Al Franken, as half of the comedy duo "Franken & Davis." His memoir, "Thirty-Nine Years of Short-Term Memory Loss: The Early Days of SNL from Someone Who Was There" was published in 2010 by Grove.

Brief Bio of "Owsley"

Owsley Stanley (better known as "Owsley" or "Bear" to his friends and family) played a key role during the' psychedelic revolution' of the sixties. He was the first person to mass manufacture LSD and is reputed to have produced more than 1.25 million doses between the years 1965 to 1967. In 1965 Owsley became the key supplier of LSD to Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. He was later featured in Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. He also provided LSD to the Beatles during the filming of Magical Mystery Tour.

In 1966 during the Acid tests Owsley met the members of the Grateful Dead. He became their first soundman as well as financier. Along with his close friend Bob Thomas, he designed the Lightning Bolt Skull Logo often referred to by fans as the' Steal Your Face' which predated the album of the same name by 8 years. Stanley began a long- term practice of recording the Dead while they rehearsed and performed. Stanley also made numerous live recordings of other leading 1960s and 1970s artists appearing in San Francisco, including Quicksilver Messenger Service, Jefferson Airplane, early Jefferson Starship, Janis Joplin, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Taj Mahal, Santana, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Cash, Blue Cheer (a band that took its name from the nickname of Stanley's LSD), and many others. While many Owsley recordings have been released, many more remain unissued.

Owsley was born (1935) into a prominent political family from Kentucky. His father was a government attorney. His grandfather, A. Owsley Stanley, a member of the United States Senate after serving as Governor of Kentucky and in the U.S. House of Representatives, campaigned against alcohol Prohibition. Owsley studied engineering at the University of Virginia before dropping out in 1956.He enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and served for eighteen months before being discharged in 1958. Later, inspired by a 1958 performance of the Bolshoi Ballet, he began studying ballet in Los Angeles, supporting himself for a time as a professional dancer. In 1963, he enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley where he became involved in the psychoactive drug scene. He dropped out after a semester, took a technical job at KGO-TV, and began producing LSD in a small lab located in the bathroom of a house near campus. His makeshift laboratory was raided by police on February 21, 1965. He beat the charges and successfully sued for the return of his equipment. The police were looking for methamphetamine but found only LSD, which was not illegal at the time.

In 1970, 19 members of the Grateful Dead and crew were busted at a French Quarter hotel after returning from a concert at "The Warehouse" in New Orleans, Louisiana for a combination of drugs.. Everybody in the band, except Pigpen and Tom Constanten, was included in the bust including s a man listed as Owsley Stanley, 35, of Alexandria, Virginia, a technician for the band, booked with illegal possession of narcotics, dangerous non-narcotics, LSD, and barbiturates. Ultimately Owsley was confined to Federal prison from 1970 to 1972, after a Federal judge intervened by revoking his release from the 1967 case. Stanley took advantage of the opportunity there to learn metalwork and jewelry-making.

Owsley died after an automobile accident in Australia on March 12, 2011. The statement released on behalf of Stanley's family said the car crash occurred near his home, on a rural stretch of highway near Mareeba, Queensland. He is survived by his wife Sheila, four children, eight grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

Before “Breaking Bad,” back in the good old days of Berkeley, the drug everyone talked about was bubbled and cooked in glass beakers and was called LSD. The best LSD on the market was called Owsley, named for the man who made it refined and pure and popularized it through the Grateful Dead.

Owsley Stanley is gone; he died in a car accident in Australia in 2011. He is recalled in a memoir, “Owsley and Me: My LSD Family,” by his former partner Rhoney Gissen Stanley, who remembers him both fondly and fairly. Gissen Stanley’s blunt and witty prose recalls the tumultuous 1960s in Berkeley and Richmond, as well as her own participation in the manufacture of the drug that symbolized the decade.

Gissen Stanley and co-author Tom Davis describe the kaleidoscopic experience of tripping on acid while having sex with “Bear,” as Owsley liked to be called. The real trick of a memoir is for the author to reveal herself with one hand, keeping the reader focused on the other, looking always into the heart of the story. Gissen Stanley is not a great magician; the woman telling the story is the star of the show, and Owsley is just the sideshow moving in and out of the narrative with a sheet of tabs and an undying libido.

The result is not enchanting; it is instead a litany of name-dropping. According to the authors, Jimi Hendrix was a “dybbuk.” Janis Joplin palmed off her tiresome lovers. Jerry Garcia was “a bodhisattva.” The passages are also typical of any drug user’s diary: “I felt like a character living in Van Gogh’s Starry Night, part of the firmament. My self had shattered like an exploding star, and I was afraid.”

Despite its shortcomings, “Owsley and Me” is an occasionally enjoyable timepiece of the Berkeley that was. Gissen Stanley was involved in the requisite number of communist, anarchist and lesbian separatist groups on campus. She recalls her family’s involvement with the music and art of the period and how drug culture both informed and was informed by those media. She is neither generous nor vindictive with the memory of the late Owsley. She describes Owsley with an odd remoteness for a longtime companion and lover but conveys their intimacy with the level detail of their mundane cohabitation. He was an entrancing wizard of chemistry and an amateur philosopher; he hated all vegetables and carbs; he chased other women; he smelled like patchouli; he used astrology to decide when to begin his acid brew. Despite the details, the man himself does not emerge. He remains a legend, something glimpsed in a pipe dream.

Owsley and Gissen Stanley were not married; she adopted his surname for anonymity and because of their shared son, Starfinder. The discussion of illegal drug use and nontraditional family structures is handled with a cheerful lack of moral posturing. Gissen Stanley tells the story without shame and seemingly without regret. She even depicts Owsley and herself diminishing through aging, fading away, becoming squares and dentists and parents. It is the way of all things, but it is safe to say none of the great hippie luminaries saw it coming.

Rhoney Gissen Stanley is one of the numinous few who clustered around the swirling social centers generated by Owsley, Harvard researcher Timothy Leary and the rest of the kooks and chemists who fueled a revolution with an eye dropper. However, the best stories of sex, drugs, and rock and roll will never be told. This story of Owsley Stanley is complete but imperfect. The rest of these stories disappeared with the burning out of bright, beautiful stars and are locked in the memories of people who cannot recall them through the haze.

"How I Survived the 60s"My book How I Survived the Sixties is available now on Amazon. com,http://amzn.to/1lrOcOYPilar Walsh [Marilyn]

Excerpts from 'How I Survived the 60s'

MYSTIC ARTS WORLD & GETTING BUSTED

Not long after I settled into my pilgrimage to find God and a loving environment, living as a teenage runaway, smoking hash and pot, becoming a fan of natural foods, learning about meditation, taking LSD and crashing wherever, I found my favorite landing spot in the hippie haven of Laguna Beach, circa 1967.

This is where the Mystic Arts World shop, lovingly built by The Brotherhood of Eternal Love embraced me in their radical hippie arms. It was like nothing I had known coming from my staid little suburb of West Covina. It was there I met my daughter’s father George, John Griggs, Ricky Bevan, Eddie Padilla, this very handsome couple Freddie and Helen (who worked there) my good friend Nina, and many other beautiful people.

Mystic Arts World, the hub for all things psychedelic, was divided into 3 rooms with a fourth private room in the back just for meditation. It was a head shop, bead shop, with wonderful artwork on display, lovely jewelry and clothing made by local craftspeople. It also had a health food store and juice bar along with books for sale. But the most profound room was their meditation room. With this enormous painting, a "Taxonomic Mandala", people could spend hours in there, meditating or just sitting and staring at the most amazing art work depicting the creation of life.

Dion Wright, a celebrated artist, had worked on this mandala painting on the East Coast but brought it to Mystic Arts World and to a most appreciative brotherhood. I spent hours in that room, high on whatever I had smoked or dropped that day. This particular coterie of hippies may have become what they call the “Hippie Mafia” with drug-dealing as primary income, but there was definitely a spiritual intention in their actions. We all wanted enlightenment and we tried what was available at the time to reach nirvana.

I was fairly new to the world of the Brotherhood. They were the most attractive and in my mind at the time, spiritually advanced hippies. Many were surfers and became relatively wealthy smuggling hash from as far away as Afghanistan, often very well hidden in a surf board.

They cornered the market on most of the drugs coming through Laguna Beach and many were well versed on how to make the best use of LSD and other mind-altering drugs. Having sessions exclusively to drop acid which later included an even more potent and popular form of LSD called “Orange Sunshine”, taking all who desired on a guided trip to experience enlightenment. Of course, it wasn’t always the case. It wasn’t unusual for some to have adverse reactions to the drug.

Most of this group lived in the canyon, a small cluster of homes mostly on Woodland Drive, affectionately known as Dodge City. I spent many days happily moving from one house to another high as a kite. One day I sat on a porch and Jack Leary, Timothy’s son, came and sat down with another fellow and myself and smoked some hash. He was quite handsome and I found myself speechless, developing a silly crush.

I fondly remember someone putting the music of Creedance Clearwater Revival on so loud, everyone on the whole street came out of their homes and we danced everywhere including on the roofs of houses. It was quite the place to drop out. It couldn’t have been a wilder arena for all of us to indulge in, we were all so young and this is what youth does. Not much different than college students and their spring break antics.

One day my friend Nina and I went to a house in another neighborhood altogether, where some of the hippie drug dealers lived and worked. One minute we were all quietly toking on a pipe or joint and the next minute there was chaos and confusion, with one of the young men yelling “the heat’s here.”

Of course, being so young and very stoned, I remember just sitting there until we were all escorted by the local police out of the house and onto a bus. Having already spent time at juvenile hall, I made sure I was going with all my older friends. Still underage, I told them I was 18 and my name was Sharon Blackwell. It worked, because I went off to Orange County jail with everyone, except for two other girls who were hauled off to juvie.

One of the young men, Peter Amaranthus, wasn’t so lucky. As we waited in jail, Nina and I were told Peter had been shot and killed, running away from the house. We were both devastated. He was becoming one of our close friends and we always got the best pot from him. I would find out much later my daughters father, George, witnessed the whole shooting. Experiencing one tragedy too many, this was something very difficult to wrap my head around as a teenager.

I spent my seventeenth Christmas in Orange County jail, and I’ll never forget when the nuns came to visit us. Trying to hold on to my stubborn defiance but feeling fear and disappointment, I am certain the nuns thought me mad. Something strange happened in this tiny jail cell. Of course, most would call it a fluke but I know now from hindsight, this was meant to happen.

Being Christmas, with the nuns visiting, we also were able watch television that evening. There is a song by the Beatles called I Am The Walrus, (indulge me here) and there is a phrase in the song that goes like this; “elementary penguins, singing Hare Krishna, oh you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allen Poe.” Okay, so here is this line from a song I love from their Magical Mystery Tour album. Enter these novice nuns looking like “elementary penguins.”

Then Nina and I spent the day singing Hare Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, followed with the evening spent watching a film about Edgar Allen Poe on TV. You may call it a quirky bit of coincidence, but as I live life, I absolutely know there are no accidents. Music played its influential part in our lives as we evolved becoming more open human beings and somehow God showed a little of His compassion to us, semi-lost, searching souls in our time of incarceration.

I will always remember this as a Christmas present from the universe, emphasizing the oneness of our world and how we are here for each other. Even the Beatles were connected to our plight. It may have been a 17-year old’s fantasy, buffering the pain of the moments in jail but now I will relish the time for what it was. A sweet, loving gift.

It was another lifetime and it almost feels like another person’s story but it is my story. It wasn’t long after this bust, I hooked up with my daughter Elea’s father, George Dumeshausen, at Mystic Arts World. This is another very deeply embedded memory of my youth, the moment George chose me to seduce and eventually set up household. (Oh yes, and impregnate me.)

How he took his hands to my legs and told me how special they were. (It helped having been a dancer most my life.) I had no idea he was absolutely crazy and out of control. It was a very tumultuous relationship to say the least. As I had mentioned before, he had drummed for a surf band. My daughter chose to take on only part of the name, Dumes, which she has used for most of her life. It would be 43 years until Elea finally met her father in Santa Cruz.

Here’s how that happened: someone told me about a documentary film in production called Orange Sunshine. A young filmmaker named William Kirkley was working on the history of the Laguna Beach’s Brotherhood of Eternal Love. I didn’t expect to see George being interviewed and when he appeared in the video clip (on Kickstarter), I was in shock to say the least.

Immediately, I contacted someone, I think it was Eddie Padilla, who could find out how to reach him. I thought he had died and I felt it was time my daughter met her biological father. I was able to put them in touch with each other. One of more impossible events I hoped would happen in my daughter’s life finally took place. I will leave that experience for her to write about someday.

I do want to mention, there is also a fascinating book called Orange Sunshine written by Nicholas Schou, about the Brotherhood, where he goes in depth about the origin of this infamous group, including the drug bust I experienced.

The late Sixties was a major time for firsts, heralding in the most concentrated use of psychedelic drugs and the popularity of outdoor rock and pop festivals. One of the most significant concerts in the history of rock n’ roll took place in 1967, set up in an artist’s haven not far from San Francisco, Monterey County Fairgrounds became a magnet for top-notch bands and an appreciative audience, attracting close to 200,000 music lovers in the course of the 3-day weekend. Monterey is a beautiful town, located on a peninsula, and in close proximity to Carmel Valley, Santa Cruz and further south, Big Sur. This concert became the template for future music festivals even though there was never another Monterey Pop festival produced, the Jazz Festivals continue even now.

I was one of the fortunate ones who attended this extravaganza of the best 60’s bands ever. Of course, a lot of my memory of the experience has been diluted with psychedelic drugs and the passing years but I will try and bring a bit of nostalgic history to the page. I had just turned 17 years old, was still living at home, but somehow I was able to convince my mother I was spending the weekend with a friend. I returned home depleted and exhausted, coming down from an incredibly powerful acid trip, and riding in the back of a VW van all the way to Monterey and back with a stop in Big Sur, which I do remember as being one of the most pristine and beautiful places on earth. My travel mates were two guys who lived on Ogden Drive in Hollywood, don’t have a clue how I met them, but I do recall their father was a well-known actor who mostly played gangsters on TV shows.

We smoked grass non-stop as we traveled along the coastline. I think we may have even picked up a hitchhiker or two along the way. What a difference a few decade makes when it comes to picking up strangers on the road. (I hitchhiked to San Francisco with a friend Nina from Laguna Beach, but that’s a different story altogether.) So as we arrived in Monterey, we were astonished at the amount of people in attendance, seeking out a new experience, known to many as the gateway to the “Summer of Love.” I hadn’t seen anything like it. The only other outdoor concert I had attended was very low-key compared to Monterey. It was my first time on a “date” with a true hippie, Brian McAdams, who I had met in Laguna Beach when my mother took me to see the local ballet company perform.

I was standing on the corner of PCH and Laguna Canyon Road, my mother was making a phone call(we had phone booths back then) and this guy just leapt out of the passenger seat of a VW bug, ran over to me and asked who I was and how he could get in touch with me.That was another first… the first real hippie I had ever met and when he came out to pick me up for our ‘date’, he and his business partner Jimi Otto, (owner of Sound Spectrum, a music store still in existence in Laguna) and his girlfriend, took me to the Costa Mesa Fairgrounds and we saw Jefferson Airplane, and the lead singer wasn’t even Grace Slick yet but another gal, Signe Anderson. So, I was smitten, firstly with the concert, the band, the pot I was smoking and everything these folks represented. They were the catalyst for my initiation into the whole Hippie sub-culture.

Getting back to Monterey, I remember Jimi Hendrix and what an impression he made with the audience. I heard that both he and the group The Who flipped a coin to see who would play first because both had incorporated in their sets, very violent endings, destroying guitars, drum sets and in Hendrix’s case, putting his guitar on fire. John Phillips of the Mamas and Papas, one of the concerts promoters, was quoted as saying, “I was used to people singing and harmonizing, taking care of their instruments…. It was shocking for me to see this kind of behavior on stage.”

The 3-day concert brought together many different genres even crossing musical boundaries, including Folk(Simon & Garfunkel, Laura Nyro)Rock (The Who, The Byrds, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin & BBHC, Country Joe & the Fish, and many more) Soul, (Otis Redding), Indian (Ravi Shanakar),Blues/Jazz(Hugh Masakela), with styles mixing it up all over the place. When Janis sang for the first time to this large audience she was incorporating blues/rock/psychedelia, putting her and Big Brother and the Holding Company on the map. Eric Burden and the Animals was one of my favorites representing the British Music scene, now that the Beatles had stopped touring and the Stones were embroiled with the law and their drug bust. But my heart throb at the time had to be Brian Jones walking around, sans the Stones and blowing everybody’s minds.

There is so much more to share but I will close with this. I still do retain to memory some of my insane acid trip, just can’t seem to put it in words but I do think it is a miracle I even got home. I was definitely committed to a new life-style with this new other-worldly encounter, a gathering of paramount significance in the molding of our generation. There is a documentary film, Monterey Pop, by D.A. Pennebaker one can see, most likely things I missed, but I am grateful for the unique and once in a lifetime happening. May you all have fond memories like these when you are reminiscing forty plus years down the pike!

oOo

Chapter Five from “How I Survived the Sixties”

Communes – And the living is Easy

I may have been born in the fifties but I missed the whole shake-up during the McCarthy era and his weeding out of so-called Communists, especially in the artistic circles where liberal thinking prevailed. It is such a shame fear can propel people to behave despicably towards others. So many lives were destroyed by this one man’s actions.

Obviously, the word commune is the root for the word communism, defining how people live. The word commune can also be referred to as “intentional communities” where all its residents share everything equally, more or less… with so many people associating communal living with the Hippie Movement it is no surprise there is a kind of mystery surrounding its true origins. All the way back to the 1840’s, these communal groups were known as “communist or socialist settlements.”

There was no question, communes in the sixties were created and supported by people who were fed-up with the Establishment. They abhorred where society was heading, living an insular, materialistic life and wanting something where the wealth was distributed equally, a place for everyone to help one another, live off the land and grow as a larger family unit. It was common all inhabitants had to have the same spiritual awareness, goals and the majority used grass, hash and mind-altering drugs to achieve this.

I was drawn to my first commune when I was 17 years old, living in Haight-Ashbury, panhandling on street corners and staying with different guys every week. My friend Nina and I had hitchhiked from Laguna Beach, something completely unheard of today. Two sweet young hippie chicks could find many friendly hippies on the road, so many driving north in there VW vans from Orange County to experience the true Hippie Mecca of San Francisco.

I had met someone in Laguna, a real outlaw, named Bobby Ackerley. He was going by the name of Christopher Wheat to keep from being found by the law and he couldn’t have been more charming and daring. Somehow through him, Nina and I found out about a commune up in Ukiah, lumberjack country, and we set out hitchhiking up to this hippie haven. Little did we know we would be going back in time, where the men ruled the roost and the women were only there to serve them. Something I will never forget as long as I live. It didn’t take long for Nina and I to become a kind of harem for Bobby, and we shared a room with another gal who Bobby had sexual encounters with also. I discovered the women would cook for the men and as they sat down to eat, the ladies would stand on the side, until the men were done and then the women would be allowed to eat. Shocking but true.

I didn’t last very long in this convoluted environment. It was very cold up in the redwoods, being accustom to Southern California, and I wasn’t prepared to become a second-class citizen to a bunch of drug-dealers. I was very aware of the gender roles and boundaries the established society dictated to women. With so many women fighting for equal rights at this time, the choice by a group of hippies to perpetuate the medieval perception of the female was demeaning and appalling to me so I got the hell out of dodge. It was back to Laguna as fast as I could hitch a ride. I found out later a few of the guys even raped some of the gals, so it was not a true commune by a long shot, but some fantasy world for a bunch of drugged out misogynists.

My second encounter with a commune was completely different. With the generous gift of a ticket to Hawaii right after giving birth and a place to land, I found myself living in Haleiwa, Oahu with an eclectic, earthy group of healthy living Hawaiian hippies, mostly partial to surfing and skinny dipping on the North Shore. Hawaii was one of the most beautiful places that I had ever been. To begin a new life was easy. We all lived in our bathing suits or self-made baggy clothes from the Indian bedspreads so popular back then. We could choose from so many different fruits and just pick them from the trees, mango, banana, papaya, passion fruit (lilikoi), guava, coconuts. It was paradise.

Of course, the amenities were nil and many a time, we had to do our bathroom business outside in the yard. We were literally camping out in a sense and we loved it. It was easy to grow our own vegetables and there was always enough to eat. The local kamainas were basically friendly to us hippies but on occasion they did refer to us as haole scum. But if you surfed and shared your pot, they were mostly pretty welcoming. Since I had a little baby at the time, the local women would make a fuss over her and I never lacked for babysitters.

As all good things do, it came to an end and I found myself flying to the Big Island a few months after landing on Oahu and that’s when my life really altered; spiritually more than anything. I mean, that was the whole purpose of dropping out wasn’t it? To become connected to the land and develop our spiritual life but I was in for a big surprise once I got to Volcano, Hawaii. Little did I know that the lovely Rosanna had a secret she would finally share with me and set me on a path that I continue to travel changing all the time, within and without of myself.

I knew Glenn Lynd and John Griggs when they were still in Anaheim, before the Brotherhood incorporated. I had probably seen Bobby Ackerly, as well, haunting Pasadena. Glenn was a family friend we saw often so we had a ringside seat for the evolution of BOEL.

And evolve it did, from Owsley to Orange Sunshine, at which point our party venue switched to Laguna Beach. Then I moved to Ojai, but was put on a year probation in San Clemente, so returned to the scene of the crimes, so to speak -- it was psychedelic Ground Zero.

We buzzed up and down Hwy 101, "runnin' on empty,' in our white Renault Caravelle Cabrio, the hot car in Paris at the time. Other times we rode to the best breaks in our boyfriends' surf wagons. I remember the foggy drives through Laguna Canyon, survivable only by intuitive second-sight and dodging the curfew police. Yes, curfew was 11PM if you were under 18.

Because I had relatives there, I was already familiar with the twisting roads. I also have fond memories of the 'Jonah in the Whale' Cave at 1000 Steps Beach. When you sat in it, it felt like being in the belly of a whale. We also loved the 7 sea caves in La Jolla. We partied in Los Trancos, a historic district of 1930s style houses and in the cliff villas.

Maybe there would be a Leary sighting. Little did I know at the time, later we would write a book together. The twist in BEL's philosophy was that they smuggled hash to pay to make more acid they virtually gave away. They believed their panacea would change the world. Or, at least, that was the story. First they got their legs wet, smuggling pot from Sinaloa, Mexico in rainbow surfboards, then they went to Afghanistan for hash, pioneers of The Hippie Trail.

BEL's stained-glass shopfront pleasure palace cum headshop, "Mystic Arts World", became a hippie Mecca that stalled traffic on Hwy. 101. You never saw so many beads in your life. Tim Leary declared his candidacy for California Governor from there in 1969. Being young and naive at the time, I had no idea we were partying with what would later be called "the hippie Mafia" by Rolling Stone magazine. That is, until my cousin married one of them.

The Original "Mystic Arts World" is arguably one of the first Organic Spiritual Centers, offering vegetarian health foods and herbs, incense, art, jewelry, beads, a mystic book store, secret stash rooms, and Holy Sacraments with a private Meditation Temple for members of the BEL.

Then Nixon moved into San Clemente, and I moved out, as did most of the others, seeking greener pastures. Those early days still continue to inform my life and art through the decades.ionamiller.weebly.com